


two hearts making amends

by mapped



Category: Black Sails
Genre: 4x02, Episode Tag, F/F, Female Ejaculation, Femslash February, Light Bondage, Oral Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Season/Series 04, Tribadism, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 19:09:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9781052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mapped/pseuds/mapped
Summary: Max returns to the inn, shaken from her meeting with Long John Silver. Idelle takes this opportunity to show Max she's sorry for conspiring with the pirates.Set between 4x02 and 4x03.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [andlightplay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/andlightplay/gifts).



> Please consider this a late birthday gift, Lou! Thanks so much for rewatching BS with me and especially for flailing over all the ladies and the f/f relationships in this show! I definitely intend to write you more fics at some point, but I hope you will accept this humble offering for now. <3
> 
> Title from Mary Lambert - 'Heart On My Sleeve'.

Heart still pounding and hands still shaking, Max dismounts the carriage and walks the rest of the way back to the inn. The noise grows as she draws nearer, the laughter of girls and the muttering of men drifting out of the open doors of the inn into the street outside. She slips past a couple groping in the doorway and heads straight to the bar to pour herself a drink, but her hands tremble too much and she curses when she splashes some of it on herself.

Then someone is taking the bottle out of her hands and pouring steadily for her.

“You look like you’ve just seen a ghost,” says Idelle, setting down the bottle.

A ghost? Something like that. Max swallows the rum eagerly, feeling it settle her almost as soon as it hits her stomach. But when she closes her eyes, all she sees John Silver naked, bright-eyed and grinning at all the women undressing before him.

“Max?” Idelle prompts, when Max is silent, staring into the amber glow of her drink. Idelle’s hand is on her shoulder. Her breath is still short, and she cannot seem to will it back to normal. Her mind in its restlessness flits back to Berringer’s veiled threats earlier. She always knew that any security she thought she had found was fleeting and illusory, but to watch things fall apart before her eyes is still terrifying, for all that she has long anticipated it happening.

“Max,” Idelle says again, when Max has drained her cup, gripping the handle of it too hard, knuckles paling. Idelle’s hand slides from her shoulder down to her elbow, then all the way down to her hand. Idelle gently prises Max’s hand free from the handle, finger by finger. She holds Max’s fingers carefully in her hand, and Max thinks of herself being led by Georgia up those stairs. She misses the days when she was the one who led rather than the one being led. So many times she took Anne’s or Eleanor’s hand lovingly in her own, and guided them up those stairs, and chased away their turmoil the only way she knew how.

Now she is the one who must be led, the one whose thoughts churn like the sea whipped by storm. She is so tired. Every time she sees how much John Silver has changed, she is forced to wonder how much she herself has changed. On the one hand, she knows, the world will never see her as anything different than what it has already decided she is—she will always be a whore, and her skin will always be darker than it should be, and she will always be the child of a slave, no matter what she does. On the other hand, she fears she has changed more than she realises. She only needs to look at the new Mrs Rogers to be afraid that she may be becoming something unrecognisable herself.

So she tugs her fingers out of Idelle’s grasp, and takes hold of Idelle’s hand instead. Idelle’s eyes widen, but she doesn’t say anything and just lets Max pull on her hand and take her up the stairs.

When they are inside Max’s room, Max touches Idelle’s face. Idelle gazes into her eyes and doesn’t back away, so Max kisses her. She means to do it softly, but when her lips meet Idelle’s, she becomes aware of her heart again, how it races still, a fledgling bird flapping its frantic wings for the very first time. The desperate flutter of her heart pushes her right into Idelle like air under a beating wing. She kisses Idelle hard, as if Idelle is the sky she wants to soar into.

It is not the first time they have done this. They have fucked for the benefit of watching clients and they have fucked in private, but that was a long time ago, before Anne, before Eleanor. It feels so different now, it almost makes Max question again how much she has changed, but she quiets that line of thought by focusing on teasing redness into the white skin of Idelle’s neck with her teeth and lips. Idelle gasps, and grabs Max’s shoulders. “Max,” she says. “I never apologised. I’m sorry for betraying your trust.”

Max lifts her head. “Were you hoping to apologise to me by fucking me?” she asks, fighting the urge to smile. She is not sure how she feels about this, but amusement is at least part of it.

“Well, it _is_ a language we both speak pretty well,” Idelle says.

Max snorts at this, and suddenly her heart is swelling with fondness for Idelle. These past few weeks, she had come to resent Idelle a little: how could she not? Everything was already going badly, and Idelle and Featherstone were only complicating matters further for her. But now that she has confronted Idelle about it, now that they are standing alone in her room, she remembers that the reason it was hurting her so much is that she has always considered Idelle one of her dearest friends. She had thought she could rely upon Idelle. Suppose she were a captain looking into the night sky to find the North Star gone: such a loss had it been to her.

“You don’t hate me for it, do you?” Idelle asks, and Max looks at her, considering.

“I did,” Max says. She circles Idelle’s wrist with her fingers, and Idelle’s breath hitches. “I did.” She draws her thumb over Idelle’s pulse, and smiles at the way Idelle shudders upon exhaling.

Idelle’s eyes close. Max knows she must hear the past tense and is relieved by it. Then Idelle opens her eyes, and Max sees that she is ready to play a game. “You could punish me,” Idelle suggests, voice a low purr. “Tie me up.”

“What kind of wrongdoer deals out her own sentence?” Max says, tilting her head. “But very well, I will tie you up.” She nods towards the bed with as much haughtiness as she can muster. “Lie down.”

Idelle lies down on the bed while Max retrieves coils of black rope from a chest. She straddles Idelle and binds Idelle’s hands together above her head. It feels so good to be close to Idelle like this again. Max remembers cool golden mornings spent sitting on the doorstep of the inn with her head on Idelle’s shoulder, breathing in the perfumed scent of Idelle’s hair as she tried to forget the stink of sweat on last night’s client. An evening when she watched the first few clients stride in through the door and she turned to Idelle with a smirk and said, “Shall we try to convince them to pay the two of us to fuck each other?” Empty hours of afternoons where they curled together in one bed, lazily kissing with no audience to see.

She kisses Idelle now, thinking of all the time that has passed since then, all the precarious love that she held onto and then let go of, all of it crumbling into the sea. Idelle is not like Eleanor, nor like Anne, but she is not like Georgia, either. All Max knows is that she would not have got very far if she had not had Idelle’s shoulder to rest her head upon in those early, bitter days of whoring.

She sucks kisses down the length of Idelle’s neck, and Idelle moans and throws her head back to encourage Max’s kisses. Max traces the outline of Idelle’s collarbone with her mouth. Idelle’s chest is heaving with quickening breaths, and Max is distracted for a moment just watching the rise and fall of it. She licks a curved path along the crescent of Idelle’s necklace, the stones of it hard and cold on her tongue. She dips her tongue down to the warm shadow between Idelle’s breasts, and Idelle swears.

Max squeezes Idelle’s breasts through fabric, her tongue continuing to lave the tops of Idelle’s breasts until they’re shining in the candlelight. She looks into Idelle’s eyes as she slowly begins to unlace the front of Idelle’s bodice. Idelle’s grey eyes smoke with desire, setting Max afire with it, too. The bodice undone and stripped away, Max orders Idelle to roll over so she can loosen Idelle’s stays from the back. Idelle does so, and Max mourns the days when Idelle wandered around dressed only in stays and a scrap of cloth around her hips. They both go about their days covered in so many layers now.

Then again, Max has always known the value of a good tease, and all these layers are a very wonderful tease indeed.

She parts the curtain of Idelle’s hair and kisses the back of Idelle’s neck while her hands busy themselves with pulling at the lace. Idelle sighs and squirms, and finally the stays are loose. Idelle wriggles her hips as Max drags her skirts off, and then she rolls over again to face upwards once more, leaving the stays on the bed to her side. She is in her shift now, nothing else, her brown nipples just visible through the ivory linen, and the patch of black hair below her belly.

Max mouths at Idelle’s nipples, the linen soaking through and darkening where her tongue lingers. Idelle arches her back off the bed. “Fuck, Max!”

“Does Featherstone appreciate you like this, hmm?” Max asks, feathering her fingers over both of Idelle’s nipples and then cupping Idelle’s breasts and kneading them firmly. Idelle groans, her thighs jumping where Max is sat upon them. Her eyes are like clouds thick with rain, brimming with some unnamed emotion.

“Not nearly enough,” she says, voice simmering like a secret. “No one knows how to do this like you do.” 

Max tuts. “And you betrayed me for him?” she laments.

“I’m sorry,” Idelle pleads. “I’m sorry.”

Max kisses Idelle’s jaw to show that she forgives her, really, and she tugs the front of Idelle’s shift down until her breasts are exposed. Max has never seen snow, only read of it in books, but she doubts that boughs laden with heaps of gleaming snow can be as beautiful as what she sees before her now. She has always loved Idelle’s breasts, how full and heavy they are, how they feel in her hands. She rubs her cheek against the swell of Idelle’s breast, flicks her tongue over the nipple, pinches it between her thumb and forefinger. She massages Idelle’s breasts and plays with those nipples until Idelle is whimpering, her hips jerking. 

She pulls Idelle’s shift the rest of the way down past Idelle’s feet so she can cast it aside. Now Idelle is completely naked except for the necklace still glinting around her neck. She looks like a painting Max would want to hang in her house, if she only had a house. But she has this inn, and Idelle breathes and lives in it too, same as her.

Max loops another length of rope around Idelle’s right ankle and ties a knot there, fastens the rope to one of the posts at the end of the bed. She does the same to the left ankle, too, and then Idelle’s legs are spread wide and Max has to sit back and just admire how gorgeous Idelle is. How gorgeous, and all hers, for a brief hour. Everything is always being lost and gained. In this moment, Max knows only gain. 

She lies on her front between Idelle’s legs and kisses Idelle’s soft thighs, and then she nuzzles Idelle’s clit. Idelle is so wet, she can taste it before she even puts her tongue to it. Just the scent of it makes her shiver. Idelle cannot do much except beg and thrust her hips feebly towards Max’s mouth. “Fucking Christ, Max, just lick me already, _please_.”

Max presses her tongue flat along Idelle’s dripping wetness and licks up over Idelle’s clit, swirling her tongue around it. She kisses and sucks Idelle’s clit until it’s swollen and dark, and then her tongue traverses down again. With her legs spread like this, Idelle’s pussy opens up to Max easily and Max licks into it, drinking the sweet salt essence of it. Her tongue slides in deep as it can go. Idelle gasps and moans, “Oh, Max, you’re the best, you’re so fucking good at this, _fuck_!”

She goes back to smoothing her tongue over Idelle’s hard clit and pushes two fingers inside Idelle, fucking her with them. She sets a rapid pace, curling her fingers demandingly to dig into the spot that makes Idelle’s thighs quiver. She keeps licking with the same rhythm as she works her fingers in and out of Idelle, and Idelle thrashes about as much as the ropes will allow her, her hips rolling. Max knows that if she does her best, she can get Idelle to—

 _Fuck_ , there it is. Max watches, mesmerised, as Idelle comes with a long shout, her whole body shaking and her hips lifting off the bed as a stream of clear liquid spurts from her, drenching the sheets. Max bites her lip, choking back the whine that rises in her throat at the sight. Jesus, it always makes her so fucking wet when she sees this.

Idelle is looking at her with eyes like smudged ink, all hazy with her climax. Max kneels with one knee between Idelle’s legs and one knee beside Idelle’s waist, and aligns her clit with Idelle’s and starts to grind her hips down, her whole body rolling like the slow slopes of a hill. Idelle moans, pressing her hips up to meet Max’s. They’re both so wet, they slide against each other with ease, and when Max leans down to kiss Idelle, her nipples brush against Idelle’s breasts with the most exquisite sparks of sensation. The pleasure builds within her, a subtle thing to begin with, the first quiet notes of a melody played on a sly flute, and then her hips are moving in a frenzy as if she is dancing to a feverish drumbeat.

The dance comes to its end when her orgasm sweeps through her, silencing the drums that were never audible in the first place. She cries out and falls to one side of Idelle, panting. She kisses Idelle softly before loosening the rope around Idelle’s wrists. With her hands free, Idelle unties the ropes from her ankles herself.

They lie there, gathering their breath, Max’s lips just lightly grazing Idelle’s shoulder, her fingers absent-mindedly caressing the side of Idelle’s breast. After a while, Idelle says, “Thank you for not handing me and Featherstone over to Berringer.”

“You are my friend,” Max says, burrowing closer into the crook of Idelle’s neck, one hand tightening around Idelle’s arm. “I do not have very many of those.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are really appreciated! <3 Find me [on tumblr](http://reluming.tumblr.com/) where S4 continues to overwhelm me with feelings.


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